With pressure mounting from consumers, legislators and retailers for a reduction in the use of plastic in packaging, what role does barrier board have to play? Neil Osment, Managing Director of paper packaging industry analysts NOA, takes a look.
Barrier board packaging isn’t new. The concept was around in the 1970s, one industry to make use of it being the meat industry, back when abattoirs packed meat at volume into plastic polymer-lined boxes, ready to be processed at meat packing factories.
But is this now the great hope for the future? Will barrier board packaging appease consumers, who are keen to get rid of single use plastics? Will it create an income stream for paper mill owners, whose post-pandemic trade has been adversely affected by factors including the Ukraine war, economic downturn and supply chain problems? Will retailers and brand owners turn to barrier board packaging, in a bid to keep consumers happy (even if it may not satisfy EU legislators)? And where do the folding carton and cardboard converters fit into the equation?
We’ll try to answer this, and more, but first let’s look at what’s happening in the world of barrier board packaging now.
Barrier solutions have existed for many decades. For instance, in the meat industry, bulk shipments of meat and poultry were moved around countries and across borders using robust fibre trays and lids that had a laminated liner or a poly bag inside. In more recent years, the outer tray and lid container have been replaced by a plastic tray (an RPC or returnable plastic container).
Once the meat or poultry had been delivered to a processing plant in a country, the meat products were then put into small, retail-ready polystyrene trays (with a pad in the bottom to soak up moisture) and then sealed with a plastic film on top, all ready to be displayed on our supermarket shelves.
Nowadays, at least in the meat industry, bulk shipments within the distribution chain still use RPCs for moving meat and poultry products long distances.
For the smaller, retail packs, most barrier solutions have now moved away from polystyrene packs (banned by the EU several years ago) and moved to using trays made from a rigid plastic material and then sealed with a top layer of single-use plastic. The nattily named ‘form, fill, seal’ process for packing meat packs that we see in the meat chillers of most of our European retailer stores today.
However, using a multi-material solution in packaging for bulk shipment – in the case of those bulk shipping containers used for distributing meat and poultry in the 1970s - was always costly, which prevented its wider uptake and eventually led to its replacement by RPCs.
But along has come a wave of consumer demand for less plastic, in particular for the very flexible, but more difficult to recycle, single-use plastics. Retailers are now bowing to pressure from consumers, who are returning their single-use plastic to in-store recycling bins by the trolley-load.
Initially, retailers have looked to resolve this problem by reverting to a mono-material plastic packaging solution, with rigid plastic bottom and rigid plastic lid. This, after all, is easier to recycle and – from the retailers’ point of view – shoppers won’t be bringing these into store. Plus, it is cheaper than designing a multi-material packaging option.
The concept of mono-material packaging also ticks the boxes for the EU Parliament, which wants packaging to be reusable or (at a push) recyclable. Rigid containers can, indeed, be reused, and there have been experiments in supermarkets to encourage this.
Tesco, for example, trialled a project called ‘Loop’ encouraging consumers to bring in refillable plastic bottles and containers, but have since shelved (pardon the pun) this scheme due to lack of consumer demand.
Waitrose is trying something similar, as is Aldi in Germany, along with other German supermarkets like Edeka. However, this idea of refilling containers in-store hasn’t generally taken off with big retailers and tends to be limited to small, high-street wholefood stores. It hasn’t really excited European consumers.
So, back to mono-material packaging i.e. rigid plastic container and rigid plastic lid. The big problem here is this solution doesn’t satisfy consumers’ demand for getting rid of plastic.
Is this where barrier board packaging might be about to come into its own?
Paper mill owners in Europe are sensing an opportunity and putting investment into R&D to develop barrier board that is entirely plastic free. Already, the laminated plastic layer is being replaced by a coating.
In the face of a challenging economic climate in the last 12 to 18 months (some mills report a downturn in volume of nearly 20 per cent over the last year), mill owners are keen to present to retailers a commercially viable, more mainstream solution; one that is plastic-free.
And what about retailers and brand owners? Where do they stand on barrier board packaging? This is now a solution that is likely to become more acceptable to retailers. Indeed, they may not have a choice if they are to satisfy consumer demand. Brand owners are now taking up the challenge.
Barrier board packaging has a use in four key areas: chilled food, frozen food, ambient food and dairy products.
For many years, frozen fish fingers have been packaged in fibre boxes which have an internal coating to resist moisture when packing the fish products. Some ice cream (notably Carte D’or) is now sold in barrier board cartons, which can be made as a tub or a pot. Flora, now produced by Dutch company Upfield, has very recently switched from plastic to fibre tubs.
Not all brand owners are going down this route yet, because expensive capital investment is required for the machinery needed to fill and handle a paper-based packaging product. But we believe the snowball is rolling downhill and getting bigger.
Finally, what about the packaging converters? The businesses that take the barrier board from paper mills and turn them into cartons with these great barrier solutions? Again, investment is needed in specialist conversion equipment to turn the raw barrier board product into the final specialised, paper packaging container.
There are clearly some hurdles to overcome before barrier board packaging becomes truly mainstream, not least innovation in the product itself and investment in conversion equipment to make the containers, as well as in new equipment to fill them with product. However, we know that barrier board solutions are coming, and we are studying their development with great interest. Watch this space.
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